OCLC’s new report (coming in June-ish) has found that as librarians “we are a different tribe.” We read more than the general population (even when you clump online and offline reading), and we’ve been using the internet longer than most people. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any of the data she displayed, or read the legends on the charts. But I’m looking forward to reading the report when it comes out, especially to see if this difference translates into differences in thoughts about privacy online (that seemed to be the thrust of several of the charts, but I couldn’t tell).

Ironically, many of the survey results answering a question about whether or not libraries should build social environments online indicated that the library is “only for books” and “shouldn’t be a dating service.” (This was from librarians and patrons alike.) Then the next talk in the very same room (by Michelle McLean) highlighted a library date night… Seems to have been rather successful.

I also liked a quote from Karen Huffman of the National Geographic Society. She says that building online communities helps people to “work within the white space of the organizational chart to get stuff done.” That’s a really neat image.

Also, Rob Cagna says that they want to make PennTags open source! YAY! I also love it that they call their user-generated reviews “Annotations.” Excellent idea.

Oh, and I haven’t been taking as many pictures as other people have been. Don’t know why. Just haven’t. What I have taken I’ll try to get up on Flickr soon-ish.

Hi Alane. Probably pulling out four or five bars in each graph, and making them stand up vertically rather than shoot across horizontally would have helped with the charts. It would have meant cutting out some of the data, but would have helped those of us near the back follow the important thrusts of the findings. Either that, or maybe setting of the important three or four bars with a different color background so that we could have seen which of the bars were under discussion.

But you’re absolutely right. It’s all easier said than done. And even with my somewhat compromised understanding of the specifics of the results, I still heard enough to make me interested in the reading the full report.